A challenge to industry exists in the current market as the resolution of available display technologies exceeds that of typical image generation and distribution infrastructure. In addition, the extremely high resolution of existing displays drives users to want larger and larger angular fields of view from a single display device.
Many large field-of-view display systems rely on a plurality of display devices, e.g. projectors, each providing a part of the image to be displayed. For example, GB-2317297 describes an image projection system for use in a large field-of-view presentation. The apparatus comprises a screen, a plurality of projectors and a plurality of beam splitters, the image display apparatus being such that each projector has its own beam splitter. The projectors and their beam splitters are arranged to be around an observer in such a way that the equivalent projection point or points are at or near to the observer's eye-point so as to form an image at a surface of the screen whereby the image is substantially geometrically correct when viewed from a location at or near to the observer and whereby there is no need for substantial pre-distortion of the image within the projector. As another example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,902,030 discloses a projection system having a plurality of off-axis projectors and a screen assembly including a display screen. The first off-axis projector produces a first image that is directed onto a first segment of the screen assembly, and the second off-axis projector produces a second image that is directed onto a second segment of the screen assembly. The second image interfaces the first image at a center axis of the screen assembly, both images intersecting the center axis at a substantially normal angle.
An alternative solution, making use of a single projector, is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,848,792. In this case a projection device is disclosed which comprises at least two high resolution input channels for receiving high resolution input signals, e.g. from image generators, and a recombination system for combining the high resolution input signals into one combined input signal with a format larger than the format of any of the input signals. The combined input signal is applied to a high resolution image forming display device for displaying an image corresponding to the high resolution imaging signal, and the imaged high resolution imaging signal is projected onto a visualisation surface.
Such a typical single display ultra-high resolution system consists of a number of independent image generators rendering to co-planar asymmetric clipping planes, as illustrated in FIG. 1. The output of each image generator is connected to a multiple video input ultra-high resolution projector, where the clipping planes are put side by side on a large multi-image panel. In this configuration, the angular extent of the pixels at the outside edges of the two clipping planes is much smaller than that of the pixels near the center of the two clipping planes. The majority of the angular resolution is driven to the edges of the complete field of view, which is counter to the desires of most users.